Travel down the highways and bye-ways of Commonwealth stamp collecting for news and views about Commonwealth stamps.

Saturday, 6 September 2014

461. "This Is Mutiny Mr Christian".

Pitcairn Islands will issue 5 exciting stamps on 25 September 2014 to commemorate the 250th birth anniversary of Fletcher Christian who led the mutiny on board the HMS Bounty. The designer, Denise Durkin, has cleverly chosen the depiction of the character in various movies and the issue provides a genuine reason for the appearance of actors such as Clark Gable ($1) and Marlon Brando ($2.80) on stamps of a small Commonwealth island. The stamps were printed in lithography by Southern Colour Print. The $3 value depicts the Australian actor Mel Gibson from the 1984 version of the story which was titled "The Bounty":-

Many stamps have been produced by certain postal agencies which depict, for no obvious reason, various film stars and celebrities on the stamps they produce with the names of various Commonwealth territories printed on them. Those celebrities rarely have any connection with the territory which has been selected to feature them. But here is a celebrity-depicting set of stamps which has genuine connections with the issuing territory and there are other cases where such issues could be quite legitimately produced - for instance there have been a number of films made over the years which tell the story of various explorers in Antarctica and territories such as South Georgia or British Antarctic Territory would have very good reasons for depicting these films on their stamps.

Jersey Post started to issue "Post And Go" stamps from the first machine to be installed in the Broad Street post office in St. Helier on 4 September 2014. Up to that date the island's "Post And Go" issues were not available from any machine situated in Jersey since none existed for public use although machines were sited at various philatelic exhibitions outside of Jersey. Thus from 4 September 2014 the status of Jersey Post And Go's could be raised from "Exhibition souvenirs" to genuine postage stamps. I will therefore begin my Jersey Post And Go collection from that date.

The first locally-sited machine stamps consist of the familiar Jersey flag design with the added inscription "BROAD STREET":-

Bizarrely, the Broad Street machine also produces Royal Mail "Union Jack" stamps with the "BROAD STREET" inscription thus creating a new Royal Mail stamp which is not sold in Britain but is only available from Jersey where the stamp has no postal validity. Unless these Union Jack Broad Street stamps are sold by the Royal Mail Philatelic Bureau we will have a unique situation whereby British stamps are produced and sold only in a foreign territory (Jersey) where they have no postal validity but are not sold in Britain where they do have theoretical postal validity.

Royal Mail will issue yet another 6 x 1st retail booklet on 18 September 2014. The booklet contains 4 x 1st Machin Head definitives and 2 x 1st "Classic Locomotives of Wales" stamps in self- adhesive format. The face value will be £3.72p:-

The British seaside architecture minature sheet which I mentioned in Blog 448 is depicted below. All 4 stamp designs appear to successfully capture the dull, grey skies of a British summer overcast with lowering clouds. Given the designs of these stamps, it is no wonder that Royal Mail has waited till autumn to issue them (date of issue: also 18 September 2014 - total face value of set of 6 stamps plus miniature sheet is £9.54p):-

Meanwhile, another recent issue from Tanzania has been offered for sale on an Internet auction site. The set was issued on 31 July 2013. The issue returns to a recurring theme of East and South African stamp issues - "The Big Five". The issue is comprised of a sheetlet of 5 different stamps and 5 miniature sheets. All the items have higher face values than are usually seen in these locally relevant sets - 5 x 1800/- for the sheetlet stamps and 5 x 1600/- for the miniature sheets giving a total face value of 17000/- or £6.27p - but let's face it, this is still less than the usual total face of a Royal Mail set of stamps and accompanying items.

Bhutan Post has announced a long list of new issues which all have subjects of local relevance.

I do not know the dates of issue of any of these at present:-

Chhoetens of Bhutan:- 1 sheetlet of 8 different stamps and one single stamp miniature sheet;

Flora and Fauna of Bhutan - 1 sheetlet of 8 different stamps and 1 single stamp miniature sheet;

Flowers of Bhutan - 1 sheetlet of 4 different stamps and 1 sheetlet of 9 different stamps;

Each of the above sets is accompanied by an additional 10nu value stamp issued in ordinary sheets;

Twelve Deeds of The Lord Buddha - 1 sheetlet of 12 different stamps and 1 single 50nu stamp miniature sheet;

Centenary of Cultural ties between UTEP (University of Texas at El Paso) and Bhutan (the University's architecture is based on that of Bhutan) - 1 sheetlet of 9 different stamps and 1 miniature sheet of 4 different stamps.

Universal Mail United Kingdom has produced what I believe is a total of another 17 strips of 5 "Bespoke" overseas postcard stamps for various tourist sites across The British Isles. Once more each strip of stamps is only obtainable from a single source - the tourist site itself - and not from Universal Mail itself so anyone wanting to obtain these items must contact the 17 different sellers (well, 16 sellers actually since there are 2 strips available from the National Gallery) to obtain the complete collection. This is plainly absurd and adds an enormous cost both in time and price to obtaining these "Bespoke" items so I have now drawn a line under my Universal Mail collection (I have the first 106 strips so I have done rather well) and will only buy the issues which Universal Mail sells itself to collectors and not buy any more "bespoke" issues which are so limited in their availability to collectors that they would never qualify for inclusion in any catalogue.

The subjects of the most recent "Bespoke" strips are:- Norwich Cathedral, York Minster, "The View From The Shard", Royal Museums Greenwich, Kelvingrove Museum, Kew Gardens, "Love Salisbury", "Titanic", English Heritage - Clifford's Tower, English Heritage - Down House, English Heritage - Eltham Palace, English Heritage - Wellington Arch, English Heritage -Jewel Tower, English Heritage - Apsley House, English Heritage - Bolsover, National Gallery - Rembrandt and National Gallery - Winter. Some of the most recent items are depicted below:-

Dear Dawn, Thank you for your comment. I'm not quite sure what you mean in your question - do you mean celebrities whose name is "Christian" as in Fletcher Christian (I cannot think of any such stamps apart from others from Pitcairn, Norfolk Island, Isle Of Man, Tonga and one or two other territories which depict Fletcher Christian and other members of his family) or do you mean notable celebrities or are distinguished by being Christians? Best wishes.